The Man - Robert Bisripis 

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Address of 
Before %e 



Boston iScottish Society 



January 25th, 1913 



Address delivered before the 

Boston Scottish Society 

January 25th, 1913, by 

Andrew Stewart 



No poet, since the Psalmist of Israel, ever gave the 
world more assurance of a Man. *' 

— Andrew Lang. 



3i^ 



// has been your peculiar fortune to capture the hearts 
of a whole people — a people not usually prone to praise^ 
but devoted with a personal and patriotic loyalty to you 
and to your reputation. * ' 

— Andrew Lang — Letters to Dead Authors. 



Tran?"-- 

Librara. 

•CT 1 7 191^ 



THE MAN -ROBERT BURNS 



Address of Andrew Stewart 
January 25th, 1913 



Members of the Boston Scottish Society and Friends: 

Robert Burns, in 1786, when he was twenty-seven 
years old, wrote from Edinburgh to his friend, Gavin 
Hamilton, at Mauchline, in this half -facetious, half-satirical 
manner : 

** For my own affairs I am in a fair way of 
becoming as eminent as Thomas a Kempis 
or John Bunyan ; and you may expect hence- 
forth to see my birthday inserted among the 
wonderful events in the poor Robin's and 
Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black 
Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge." 

Knowing as we do now his deathless fame, nothing 
about this prediction is so remarkable as its extreme 
modesty. One hundred and twenty-seven years have 
fled since then, and to-night throughout the world tens of 
thousands of men and women are listening to words of 
admiration and affection for Robert Burns, poet of Scot- 
land, but more than that and much better than that, poet 
of Humanity as no other is. 

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Few men have been more talked about, and yet, after 
all the talk, more misunderstood. Often on one hand has 
been unreasoning adulation and, on the other, unreasonable 
criticism, with the result that people's minds are not clear 
as to what manner of man he really was. 

I have had just one desire as I have thought about what 
I would best say here to-night, and that has been that it 
might be something that would result in others' seeing this 
man as I believe he was, truly and intrinsically. And so 
I decided not to speak about him, but rather to have him 
speak to you for himself. Surely you will listen to him 
when you might not care to listen to me. Surely you will 
believe him when you might consider me mistaken. 

Now, to begin with, I should like to have you observe 
what his attitude was toward his own shortcomings, and 
also what it was toward the failings of others. 

We find him writing to a friend in 1787 : 

**I lie so miserably open to the inroads 
and incursions of a mischievous, light armed, 
well mounted banditti, under the banners of 
imagination, whim, caprice and passion ; 
and the heavy armed veteran regulars of 
wisdom, prudence and fore-thought, move so 
very very slow, that I am almost in a state of 
perpetual warfare, and, alas frequent defeat." 

Again he writes : 

** I have been this morning taking a peep 
through, as Young finely says, * the dark 
postern of time long elapsed ; ' 'twas a rueful 
prospect ! My life reminded me of a ruined 
temple. What strength, what proportion 

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in some parts, what unsightly gaps, what 
prostrate ruins in others. I kneeled down 
before the Father of Mercies and said, 
* Father, I have sinned against Heaven and 
in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be 
called thy son.'" 

Upon another occasion he said : 

'* I have often observed in the course of 
my experience of human life that every man, 
even the worst, has something good about 
him ; though very often nothing else than 
a happy temperament of constitution inclin- 
ing him to this or that virtue. For this 
reason no man can say in what degree any 
other person besides himself can be with 
strict justice called wicked. Let any of the 
strictest character for regularity of conduct 
among us examine impartially how many 
vices he has never been guilty of, not from 
any care or vigilance but for want of oppor- 
tunity, or some accidental circumstance in- 
tervening ; how many of the weaknesses of 
mankind he has escaped because he was out 
of the line of such temptation ; and what 
often, if not always, weighs more than all 
the rest how much he is indebted to the 
world's good opinion, because the world does 
not know all ; I say any man who can thus 
think, will scan the failings, nay, the faults 
and crimes of mankind around him with a 
brother's eye." 

Such profound sorrow for one's own offences and such 
generous charity for the sins of others I have not frequently 
observed. 

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I think you will agree with me that a man without a 
sense of responsibility and obligation does not deserve 
respect and should not have it. Where did Robert Burns 
stand on this important matter ? Writing from Ellisland 
to Miss Chalmers in 1788 about his marriage to Jean 
Armour he said : 

** Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire 
I married * my Jean.' This was not in conse- 
quence of the attachment of romance perhaps, 
but I had a much loved fellow creature's hap- 
piness or misery in my determination, and I 
durst not trifle with so important a deposit." 

And in a letter to John Ballantine he wrote : 

**I have still this favorable symptom of 
grace, that when my conscience, as in the 
case of this letter, tells me I am leaving 
something undone that I ought to do, it 
teazes me eternally till I do it." 

In the attempt I have made to get at the heart of this 
man, nothing I have found has appealed to me more than 
his sympathy with the struggles of others. He wrote in 
1790 to Crauford Tait of Edinburgh a letter of introduc- 
tion for a young friend William Duncan by name, in which 
he said : 

** You my dear Sir were born under kinder 
stars, but your fraternal sympathy I well 
know can enter into the feelings of the young 
man who goes into life with the laudable am- 
bition to do something, and to be something 
among his fellow creatures, but whom the con- 
sciousness of friendless obscurity presses to 
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the earth and wounds to the soul ! What 
pleasure is in the power of the fortunate and 
the happy, by their notice and patronage to 
brighten the countenance and glad the heart 
of such depressed youth ! I am not so angry 
with mankind for their deaf economy of the 
purse : — the goods of this world cannot be 
divided without being lessened — but why 
be a niggard of that which bestows bliss on 
a fellow-creature yet takes nothing from our 
own means of enjoyment? We wrap our- 
selves up in the cloak of our own better for- 
tune, and turn away our eyes, lest the wants 
and woes of our brother-mortals should dis- 
turb the selfish apathy of our souls ! " 

And to another he wrote : 

** I do not see that the turn of mind — of 
one who spends the hours and thoughts which 
the vocations of the day can spare, with 
Ossian, Shakespeare, Thomson, Shenstone, 
Sterne, etc. — I say I do not see that the 
turn of mind and pursuits of such a one are 
in the least more inimical to the sacred inter- 
ests of piety and virtue than the even lawful 
bustling and straining after the world's riches 
and honors ; and I do not see but he may 
gain heaven as well ; — as he who straining 
straight forward and perhaps spattering all 
about him gains some of life's little emi- 
nences, where after all, he can only see and 
be seen a little more conspicuously than what 
in the pride of his heart he is apt to term the 
poor indolent devil he has left behind him." 

And in an immortal prayer which he has left us, — which 

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in itself ought to have been enough to have kept him from 
being misunderstood, — he said : 

**Thou, Almighty Author of peace and 
goodness and love ! do thou give me the 
social heart that kindly tastes of every man's 
cup. Is it a draught of joy? — warm and 
open my heart to share it with cordial, un- 
envying rejoicing. Is it the bitter potion of 
sorrow? Melt my heart with sincerely sym- 
pathetic woe ! Above all, do thou give me 
the manly mind, that resolutely exemplifies, 
in life and manners, those sentiments which 
I would wish to possess." 

Nothing about Burns was more Scottish than his aggres- 
sive pride and independence. In respect to this he 
asserted : 

*'We ought, when we wish to be econo- 
mists in happiness, we ought, in the first 
place, to fix the standard of our own charac- 
ter, and when on full examination, we know 
where we stand and how much ground we 
occupy, let us contend for it as property." 

Writing in 1793 to Clarinda about the neglect of him by 
his one-time closest friend, Robert Ainslie, he said : 

*' I had a letter from my old friend a while 
ago, but it was so dry, so distant, so like a 
card to one of his clients, that I could scarce 
bear to read it. He is a good honest fel- 
low ; and can write a friendly letter, which 
would do equal honor to his head and his 
heart, as a whole sheaf of his letters I have 
by me will witness ; and though fame does 
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not blow her trumpet at my approach now, 
as she did then, when he first honored me 
with his friendship, yet I am as proud as 
ever ; and when I am laid in my grave, I 
wish to be stretched at my full length, that 
I may occupy every inch of ground which 
I have a right to." 

Some one has said that ** gratitude is a lively sense of 
favors to come." Often altogether too true ! But what a 
splendid example of gratitude and loyalty did Burns set 
us in his attitude toward his patron Lord Glencairn. He 
writes : 

** I have found a worthy, warm friend in 
Mr. Dalrymple of Orangefield, who intro- 
duced me to Lord Glencairn, a man whose 
worth and brotherly-kindness to me I shall 
remember when time shall be no more." 

In a letter to Lady Glencairn he said : 

** When I am tempted to do anything im- 
proper, I dare not, because I look upon my- 
self as accountable to Your Ladyship and 
family. Now and then when I have the 
honor to be called to the tables of the great, 
if I happen to meet with any mortification 
from the stately stupidity of self-sufficient 
squires, or the luxurious indolence of upstart 
nabobs, I get above the creatures by calling 
to remembrance that I am patronized by the 
noble house of Glencairn." 

And how drenched in sadness and woe is the letter he 
wrote to an oflScial of the Glencairn household at the time 
of Lord Glen cairn's death : 

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*' God knows what I have suffered, at the 
loss of my best friend, my first, my dearest 
patron and benefactor ; the man to whom I 
owe all that I am and have ! I am gone 
into mourning for him, and with more sin- 
cerity of grief than I fear some will, who by 
nature's ties ought to feel on the occasion. 

** I see that the honored remains of my 
noble patron are designed to be brought to 
the family burial place. Dare I trouble you 
to let me know privately before the day of 
interment, that I may cross the country and 
steal among the crowd to pay a tear to the 
last sight of my ever revered benefactor." 

How any one with any real knowledge of Robert Burns 
and at the same time any real conception of religion could 
ever have considered him irreligious is simply beyond my 
comprehension. In one of his numerous letters to Cla- 
rinda he made this statement : 

** I will lay before you the outlines of my 
belief. He who is our Author and Pre- 
server, and will one day be our Judge, must 
be (not for his sake in the way of duty, but 
from the native impulse of our hearts) the 
object of our reverential awe and grateful 
adoration. He is almighty and all-bounteous ; 
we are weak and dependent, hence prayer 
and every other sort of devotion. * He is not 
willing that any should perish but that all 
should come to everlasting life,' conse- 
quently it must be in everyone's power to 
embrace his offer of ' everlasting life,' other- 
wise he could not, in justice, condemn those 

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who did not. A mind pervaded, actuated 
and governed by purity, truth and charity, 
though it does not merit heaven, yet is an 
absolutely necessary prerequisite without 
which heaven can neither be obtained nor 
enjoyed ; and by divine promise such a mind 
shall never fail of attaining * everlasting 
life ' ; hence the impure, the deceiving and 
the uncharitable exclude themselves from 
eternal bliss by their unfitness for enjoying 
it. The Supreme Being has put the imme- 
diate administration of all this for wise and 
good ends known to Himself into the hands 
. of Jesus Christ, a great personage, whose re- 
lation to Him we cannot comprehend, but 
whose relation to us is a Guide and Saviour ; 
and who except for our own obstinacy and 
misconduct will bring us all through various 
ways and by various means to bliss at last. 

*'My creed is pretty nearly expressed in 
the last clause of Jamie Dean^s grace, an 
honest weaver in Ayrshire, * Lord, grant 
that we may lead a gude life ; for a gude 
life makes a gude end ; at least it helps 
weel.'" 

**You see how I preach — I admire the 
close of a letter Lord Bolingbroke writes 
to Dean Swift, * Adieu, dear Swift ! with 
all thy faults I love thee entirely ; make an 
effort to love me with all mine.' " 

At a time of extreme anxiety, when Burns was being 
hounded by enemies and threatened with dismissal from 
his office because he had dared to express his disapproval 
of certain actions of the government, he wrote to John 

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Francis Erskine of Mar a letter in which he defines the 
duty of citizenship as it has seldom been defined, and 
which to-day, as then, sounds a trumpet call to duty. He 
writes : 

'*You have been misinformed as to my 
final dismission from the Excise ; I am still 
in the service, — indeed, but for the exertions 
of a gentleman, Mr. Graham of Fintray, 
who has ever been my warm and generous 
friend, I had without so much as a hearing, 
or the slightest previous intimation, been 
turned adrift with my helpless family to all 
the horrors of want. Had I had any other 
resource probably I might have saved them 
the trouble of a dismission ; but the little 
money I gained by my publication is almost 
every guinea embarked to save from ruin an 
only brother, who, though one of the worthi- 
est, is by no means one of the most fortunate 
of men. Now, sir, to the business in which 
I would more immediately interest you. The 
partiality of my countrymen has brought me 
forward as a man of genius and has given 
me a character to support. In the poet I 
have avowed manly and independent senti- 
ments, which I trust will be found in the 
man. Reasons of no less weight than the 
support of a wife and family have pointed 
out as the only eligible line of life for me 
my present occupation. Still my honest 
fame is my dearest concern, and a thousand 
times have I trembled at the idea of those 
degrading epithets that malice or misrepre- 
sentation may affix to my name. 

" In your illustrious hands, sir, permit me 
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to lodge my disavowal and defiance of these 
slanderous falsehoods." 

** Burns was a poor man from birth and an 
exciseman from necessity, but — I will say it, 
the sterling of his honest worth no poverty 
could debase, and his independent British 
mind, oppression might bend but could not 
subdue. 

** I have three sons who I see already have 
brought into the world souls ill qualified to 
inhabit the bodies of slaves. Can I look 
tamely on and see any machination to wrest 
from them the birthright of my boys? No ! 
I will not ! should my heart's blood stream 
around my attempt to defend it. Does any 
man tell me that my full efforts can be of no 
service, and that it does not belong to my 
humble station to meddle with the concern of 
a nation? I can tell him that it is on such 
individuals as I that a nation has to rest, both 
for the hand of support and the eye of in- 
telligence. *^The uninformed mob may swell 
a nation's bulk, and the titled, tinsel, courtly 
throng may be its feathered ornament, but 
the number of those who are elevated enough 
in life to reason and reflect, yet low enough 
to keep clear of the venal contagion of a 
court, these are a nation's strength." ^ 

To do something to dissipate the mist gathered about 
the personality of Robert Burns has been my earnest and 
only wish to-night, for I know that the clearer the view 
and the closer the inspection of him the more there will be 

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found in him to admire, respect and love, and the more 
certainly will not only the splendor of his genius be 
revealed, but also the inherent strength and beauty of his 
character. 



** I see amid the fields of Ayr, 
A ploughman, who in foul and fair 

Sings at his task. 
So clear, we know not if it is 
The laverock' s song we hear, or his. 

Nor care to ask. 

** For him the ploughing of these fields 
A more ethereal harvest yields 

Than sheaves of grain. 
Songs flush with purple bloom the rye, 
The plover's call, the curlew's cry 

Sing in his brain. 

** Touched by his hand the wayside weed 
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed 

Beside the stream 
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass 
And heather, where his footsteps pass. 

The brighter seem. 



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At moments wrestling with his fate, 
His voice is harsh, but not with hate. 

The brush-wood hung 
Above the tavern door lets fall 
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall 

Upon his tongue. 

But still the music of his song 
Rises o' er all elate and strong. 

Its master chords 
Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood; 
Its discords, but an interlude 

Between the words." 

— H. W. Longfellow. 



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